It's definitely got chilly again, rather annoyingly - not sandals weather at the moment really :( Yesterday alternated between sun & rain with an occasional side order of hail, so we didn't head into town. Given we were only really after a replacement for one of the leads that connects the computer to the hifi it wasn't important enough to get rained on. And I managed to pop out to the co-op for beer & cake while it was sunny so that was a win :)

Played quite a lot of FFXIII during the afternoon coz J was reading a (scary) chapter of his hieroglyphs book. I'd planned to do the missions in the Faultwarrens, having gone through once I was going to go back and do the other possible routes. But I got bogged down on one that just seemed impossible - I just didn't have enough HP to survive the creature's main attack. I was hoarding CP coz I'd maxed out (at this level) 3 roles for each character and I know there's more levels. So I carried on with the main story for a little bit instead - and pretty much the next bit was an end-of-chapter (I think) boss, and after that I got a crystarium expansion so I could use all my accumulated CP to max out 2 roles & work on a third one for each char. Which has added about 3k HP to each one \o/ Back to the Faultwarrens for me, to see if that helps. I'm not too worried if it doesn't though - from poking around online I know that at the end of the story I'll be able to get back to the missions and by that stage I can get all the characters maxed out in every single role (providing I get enough CP), so I can have loads more HP than I do now. And more abilities, more strength, more magic, more stuff generally. Still enjoying trying to do them now, just not going to stress about it too long if I can't.

I think I'm up to 67hrs played now ... which is a helluva lot. I mean, I know it's only about 10% of the amount of time I've sunk into L4D, about half of what I've played of quakelive and presumably I've also played way way more quake4 in the past. But for a singleplayer game for me that's quite a lot - partly coz multiplayer games have the social side of it to keep me hooked. And for all those 3 listed the problem is never that I can see what I need to do but can't fight my way around the control system to let me do it - which is something FFXIII shares. That's often the deal breaker for me for games - like Little Big Planet, which I like but it sends me into fits of rage as I just can't make my sackcritter DO things. It's what killed Devil May Cry 4 for me too - got to a bit where I knew exactly what I needed to do, but could I do it? Could I hell. And no way to advance till I'd done it, so after a few rage filled hours I just gave up. Unlike J I don't enjoy swearing at games ;)

(Incidentally the dictionary in firefox is on crack - how come "helluva" is a word but "multiplayer" isn't? o.O )